Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Nostalgia
Words by Seán O Boyle
Nostalgia is a funny thing. It’s a strange, comforting and yet melancholic feeling. A feeling of something lost, usually innocence or safety. It can be an alluring thing. It’s often used as a quick reprieve from the present, especially when things get overwhelming. Ah yes, the good old days. When you were in your childhood home. When your school days were your only worry. When your parents seemed infallible and perfect. When everything made sense, or at least seemed to. It’s quite a therapeutic process and can provide an element of perspective to where you are in the here and now. Yes, nostalgia is truly a funny, yet wonderful thing.
Anyway, here’s how a weird PS1 game evokes some of the strongest feelings of nostalgia within me more than anything else in my life.
The tie-in video game of Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone came out on a variety of platforms to coincide with the release of the film of the same name, based on the book of the same name, written by She Who Must Not Be Named for very obvious reasons. One such platform was the original Playstation. In 2001, the console was very much fit for pasture. By this stage, it had been way past its prime of 1998, when a plethora of classics were released. Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot 3 and Spyro The Dragon to name a few. The PS2 had already been out for a year and it too was starting to see its own classics already. And yet, Electronic Arts sought to develop and release a brand new movie tie-in game for the poor, weathered and worn 32-bit system. The results were...interesting.
The PS1 version of Philosopher’s Stone has garnered a cult and meme-like following in recent years. However, it’s important to look back to the year 2001 and see the initial reaction from journalists at the time. Gamespot gave it a 4 out of 10, saying it was “a game that should be avoided by most”. Other outlets provided equally average scores. And they were right. The game, objectively, is extremely average. The gameplay is derivative of 3D Zelda but emulated to much less effect. The level design goes from overly basic to infuriatingly unfair. Its graphics are the most notorious affair. Everyone and everything in the game world looks slightly melted, as if the disc was left to bake in the sun a little too long. You’ve probably seen a PS1 Hagrid meme or two on the internet. For all intents and purposes, it is a mediocre tie-in created and sold to make a quick buck off the back of its more enjoyable movie counterpart. Yet, it reminds me so strongly of home and of my childhood. And for that, I love it.
I opened this game and a PS1 on Christmas of 2002. I was nine years old and I was the happiest boy in the world. I remember running around screaming in joy at what Santa had brought me. It was enough to rival that “Nintendo 64 kid” video on YouTube. My dad and uncle set it up for me, for what felt like an age. I was convinced the Playstation was this piece of sophisticated technology that took hours to install when really all it took was plugging a SCART cable into the back of a telly and turning the power on.
The game itself isn’t long at all. You can beat it in less than 6 hours but I was nine years old and had never played a video game before. So I was bad at it. Very bad at it. Now soon to be twenty eight, my video game skills haven’t improved all that much. The game took me quite some time to beat. And so certain parts of the game remind me of certain parts of my childhood.
The crescendo of the PS1 startup sound followed by the EA logo reminds me so much of that Christmas as do the opening levels. My cousins were visiting at the time and were watching me play. There’s a part where you meet Ron Weasley and he tells you how to do a jump. He says “Harry to jump, just press forwards on your controller”. I remember one cousin joking “I don’t remember that line from the book.”
There’s a section later when you do your first broom flying lesson and I couldn’t grasp the concept of flying through hoops and kept failing. My parents had been watching and must have been somewhat concerned with my spatial reasoning. I remember my cousins and I being so utterly horrified by Hagrid’s appearance. We were a bunch of dumb kids and even we knew something was off about him.
When I returned to school after Christmas break, I excitedly told all my classmates how I got a PS1 and this Harry Potter game. I remember asking my teacher what was the Irish for Playstation and she dryly replied “An Playstation”.
The game really stressed me out a few times as well. I found the entire section in the dungeon quite frightening and the part where you had to sneak past Filch in the Forbidden Corridor gave me so much anxiety, I turned the game off when he would catch me as I couldn’t handle the consequences of my failure (being thrown back about 5 minutes to an earlier point).
There was one time I got stuck on a section and had absolutely no idea what to do. Now I grew up in the back-end of nowhere in Co. Mayo, so looking things up online wasn’t the commodity it would become one day. I opened the game’s manual and saw that there was a number for the EA helpline. Of course, it was for customer related issues only but I was convinced they had a dedicated 24/7 helpline for nine year old boys stuck on Harry Potter games. My mother stopped me from ringing the helpline and told me to figure it out for myself. I’m not even sure the number would have worked. But I learned a valuable lesson in perseverance that day. A lesson I would absolutely abandon once I had broadband a few years later.
Those are just a few memories from my childhood that I attribute to this Harry Potter game. But why this game? I played much better ones around that time, from Crash to Final Fantasy and yet it’s this melted Madame Tussauds of a game that makes me remember such memories in vivid detail. Is it as simple as it being the first game I ever played? I also got a Spider-Man game that Christmas. Would I now have a totally different brand of nostalgia had I decided to pop that one in instead? I don’t think so.
I think that the game is so inherently bizarre in its appearance and design that of course it made such an impression on me as a kid. There were moments of such frustration from the wonky controls that I think they scarred me for life. The Daliesque graphics made me feel like I was playing a game while suffering heavily from food poisoning. Some of the sound design and music choices evoked pure dread, especially in the dungeon areas.
I might be embellishing one or two elements from the game but my point stands. For a game written off as a mediocre cash grab by the media at the time, it provided such a unique experience for me and for many others too. Today if you scroll the comments of any Harry Potter PS1 Let’s Play on YouTube, there is a consensus of it being a memorable game with questionable presentation but most of all, you will see people agree about how nostalgic even the starting menu makes them. Whether intentional or not, the developers created a nostalgic juggernaut back in 2001 that has gone on to have its own cult following.
But again I ask, why this game or any game for that matter? Why don’t I get the same feeling from more “legitimate” sources of nostalgia like a family photo album or some heirloom? Why does the sight of Draco Malfoy’s blocky, polygonal face remind me of this Christmas far more strongly than an actual photo taken during the time? Part of me thinks it has to do with the interactivity of the medium itself. Perhaps it is purely because the act of playing a video game is so engaging that the mind just subconsciously logs anything and everything going on around you at that time. Ok, I feel like I’m heading into pseudo-science territory here.
The actual answer is probably much simpler; I was happy. Having my own game console and game to play was such a wonderful feeling all those years ago. I was in a state of pure bliss and a whole new world was opened to me. Sure, there were better games to come, but this one would always be my first. And so, when I think of this game I am reminded of the elation I felt back then and the people who were there to share it with me. My parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins, some of whom are unfortunately no longer with us. I can’t choose where this nostalgia comes from but I don’t regret it at all. I love this game, not for its content, but for the context it provides and the memories it allows me to relive.
They say you shouldn’t get too wrapped up in the past. That rose tinted glasses stop you from looking forward but the present can be difficult. Indeed, the last year and a half has certainly shown us the worst that life can throw at you. So I say indulge your nostalgia wherever it comes from! Who says it has to be a family photo or some other “legitimate” source? If you get that same, sentimental feeling from Shrek 2, then so be it. It’s still completely valid. Give yourself a break because I certainly will be.
In a year or so, whenever I find adulthood a bit too much, I’ll be replaying Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone. I’ll be running around Hogwarts collecting beans and zapping snails to my heart’s content. I’ll be flying a broomstick while the heavily compressed voice of Madame Hooch gives out to me for missing hoops. I will stare Hagrid right into his dead, low resolution eyes and I’ll be reminded of that Christmas. I’ll be reminded of home.
Seán O'Boyle is a writer, hailing from Mayo but currently based in London. He found his passion for writing when he dabbled in stand-up comedy in his college days. Now he hones the skills he picked up into making deranged tweets and unwatched YouTube videos. He's also an avid consumer of any and all media, the more mindless, the better.
